Community-oriented parade marches through Southeast Newport News

Faith, community and helping others were the orders of the day when hundreds of Newport News residents lined the streets Saturday for the 23rd Annual Southeast Community Day Parade.

The parade, which began at Booker T. Washington Middle School at 10 a.m. and lasted into the afternoon on Saturday, included seven high school bands, a handful of churches and many youth mentoring programs, including the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Virginia Peninsula. The parade is part of a larger weekend of festivities to celebrate and encourage community involvement and improvement.

The parade concluded with an homage to the 1963 March on Washington, which was led by Martin Luther King Jr. and celebrated it's 50th anniversary last month. Southeast Community Day founder Andrew Shannon and Bernice King, the daughter of the late civil rights leader, led a two-block march down Jefferson Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza where the younger King addressed the assembled crowd

King said that to improve a community, change has to come from within.

"We do have issues, we do have problems, we do have challenges. We've got to ... stop all the hating and stop all the violence and stop all the crime in our communities because if we don't do it, nobody else will," she said. "If we don't revitalize and build up our communities, nobody else is going to do it."